Question 2In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

EVALUATION

Music VideoWe wanted our music video to follow ‘pop’ music video conventions but not to be too similar to a lot of generic videos of this genre. A lively, bright themed video was definitely our priority. If we’d have compared our video to Selena Gomez’ Kill ‘em with Kindness, even though it is certainly a pop video, it would be described as dull and boring and that is not how we wanted our video to be perceived. You could say that we challenged the pop music video convention by making ours colour with a quick cutting rate as opposed to a fairly bland video with a slow cutting rate. Our video definitely took features from other music genres but is reiterated that it’s normal by Jacque Derrida’s theory. ‘a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without… a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless texts.’ Emphasising the fact that each music video is different but does certainly contain some conventions of one kind or another.

An identifiable convention of the pop music video genre is the ‘star image’. Andrew Goodwin’s theory states that the act should feature dominantly in the video to keep the audience connected and this is extremely vital in this genre of music video. The person that features in our video is female Goodwin states that a key part to gaining the audience’s attention is a constant eye contact with the camera, known as being voyeuristic. I feel this is shown in our video and consequently goes along with the conventions. A feature that goes hand in hand with eye contact, is miming the lyrics directly to the camera and we took advantage of this in our music video. Although this doesn’t happen in every video, I think that it is an important feature, especially in pop videos and it represents interaction with the audience which is also an important convention.

Music VideoIn comparison to real music videos, ours contains a clear difference in the locations we used. Obviously one of the factors for this was our budget but I felt that using local locations was a helpful thing. It aided us to give the kind of tint on the video that we wanted. Although it would’ve been ideal to use improved locations, I don’t think it affected our ability to film a proper pop music video.

Theorist Andy Goodwin feels that ‘iconography’ is a major factor in success. By using a large number of close-ups it theoretically leads to exposure for the artist as they become more recognisable.

As our song was by a single artist it was easy to insert multiple close ups into our video especially with it being a common theme in the pop genre. We took advantage of the studio part of our music video, when the lighting was perfect so that we could exposure our artist as well as possible.

As our song was by Ariana Grande we decided it would be best if we modelled our actress in a similar style of clothes to what Ariana Grande wears in her music videos. We gave her a very casual look, but one that made her look like a popstar in order to fit in with the conventions. In my opinion the simple style was effective in the video throughout.

Album AdvertMany magazine adverts feature the artist as the main focus and we have done this in our advert by placing them in the centre of focus in the middle of the page. When studying a range of other magazine adverts, we found that the simpler the advert, the more effective it was. As a result we took this to the extreme by making it as simple as possible but still including all the features that were needed to promote the artist and their new album. We decided to use high key lighting, to show that it has a positive vibe and one related to pop music, to try and reach our target audience. Although some of the other adverts we studies featured a fair amount of text, we believed that ours was effective enough (as seen on the right). Our advert featured the artist and title of the album at the top, which hopefully in itself was a selling point, a strategy and convention that a lot of well-known artists and bands use. By using the same photo and font as featured on the digipak, we hoped the audience would be able to recognise more easily the artist and album and therefore hopefully selling more products.

Album AdvertA key feature that other magazines use is by listing the ‘hits’ that have already been released by the artist, and so this could be a selling point to customers if they’ve heard of or like the songs that have been named. ‘Featuring hits’ is a common feature on many pop artist advertisements and we’ve exemplified this in ours.

The release date is key as it gives the consumer something to look forward to and by including the artists’ social media along the bottom to promote the artist, it gives an incentive to get involved which helps publicise the artist to an even greater extent. Many artists in the modern day use social media to promote their material and it is a good way of getting your name out there because of the sheer amount people that use social media. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter have millions of users and artists take advantage of this to gain publicity.

Again the mise-en-scene in the form of costume is emphasised by using the same outfit throughout all of our ancillary texts for a complete look.

DigipakFor our front cover we used a common strategy used by pop artists, which is a simplistic look that features just the artist in order to promote them solely. By using the same look throughout all of my media products, it helps the consumer to recognise the brand. For example they may see the advert but not the digipak and this may persuade them to buy the album if they like the songs they have released. We had to give the digipak an Ariana Grande ‘look’ to it, so that loyal fans would be ore likely to buy the products again, but at the same time we needed to find the right balance between new and old features.

For the back of our digipak, we included the CD contents. This is because it is a common convention on the back cover of a CD case. The reason behind it is so that the audience is aware of which songs feature on the album so they know what they are buying. All in all, our back cover followed conventions very closely.

DigipakThe DVD aspect of the Digipak breaks a convention by having a sleeve for the actual DVD as opposed to a space for the disk. We did this to free up more room for information about the DVD itself and to make this panel look more attractive. We included a description of the journey the audience will be taken on over the duration of the movie, to enhance its appeal.

Our left, inside and back cover are all part of the same landscape image. This is done to create a continuity, which a lot of digipaks also do, but not perhaps with the same theme that we have chosen (a sunset). This thee is used to portray the kind of album it is, which is hopefully a selling point to the consumer.

Digipaks normally display a range of photos from different distances and angles and I feel we have portrayed this nicely in our digipak. We used a side profile close up, a medium shot and a long shot with Ariana facing away from the camera. This is done to create affect but also to show our capabilities with our range of shots. Obviously by using the artists face, it is clearly recognisable ad compatible with the advert as well as the music video.

Our colour scheme and design were fairly conventional I feel, and I think we definitely found the right balance of images to use on our Digipak. Even though it seems a simplistic look, I believe that it is effective, much like a lot of other digipaks.